Billabong Pro Trestles 2000 – Day Four

Friday’s Action At The Billabong Pro”If you have a red or blue band, green has priority over you”[IMAGE 1] Friday’s waves were bigger, however, anyone watching was staring at the competitors backs thinking, “Why does my ass hurt so bad.”

There was a lot of sitting around, both for the competitors and their fans on the beach. The favorites kept dropping all day. As of now, it looks like Mr. Garcia has all but won the whole season. His heat against MickLowe actually had waves. Standing near Luke Egan and the rest of the Billabong crew, I watched as Mick ripped off a couple of backsideturns only to fall on the fourth and get a 6.45-he needed a 7.1. Luke yelled, his friends cringed, and Mick threw his board. Luke’schances dropped when Mick fell.

“I was watching,” said a relieved Garcia. “I was just going, ‘No, don’t do it to me.’ I saw a big splash and I heard thecommentator say that he fell, so I had a big sigh of relief. I still though that there was a chance that they might give him the score,he lit that wave up pretty good.”

“I just wanted to make the quarters. Now I have 110 points more than him. Every heat that I make is a little closer to clinchingthe world title. For me, coming here to Trestles, I figured guys like Rob, Taj Burrow, and a bunch of other guys would be dangerous. Iknew that I needed to do good here. Hopefully if I do well enough here, I can clinch it in Brazil. Then I won’t have to worry about goingto Pipe and that whole Kelly scenario, like the last time.[IMAGE 2]

TransWorld’s international correspondent Todd Prestage got one of the shit wave heats against Jake Paterson and being patientdidn’t pay off. While Todd waited, Jake took smaller ones and amassed four waves before Todd had one. Needing a 6.06, Todd got a last shotonly to get a 5.86-shocka. The famous Trestles interference bug took a hold of Conan Hayes on the first wave of his heat. After the traditional “going left,no going right” standoff’s, both Conan and Fabio Gouveia fell. Fabio got a ding and Conan got the interference-very questionable.

After an hour long high-tide break, the MSF Expression Session kicked in. I don’t know how they award everyone so I made up myown. You know how Comedian Jerry Lewis makes a high-pitched noise that goes, “ahhh, hahhhhaa, ahahah,” well Jake Paterson gets that awardfor putting seaweed on his head and potty sitting the whole way in. For the Olympic gymnastics award, Andy Irons takes home the gold forhis rebound to 360 to rebound to 360. Tim Curran was boosting some nice airs so I decided to give him the gas award.[IMAGE 3]

In one of the more controversial heats of the day, the judges for the Shane Dorian-Shea Lopez heat let everyone know that lengthreally doesn’t matter. Taking a super long right with a number of turns, his score of a 5.5 had the crowd going, “What the feezy?” Despitethat, Shane built a lead until the final seconds when Shea took an inside Shane let him have and got a 5.75 to win, “I know this wave,”said Lopez. “I knew where it was coming in on the reef and saw the double up. I couldn’t believe he was letting me have it. It’s like,’He doesn’t see this double up.’ Just had the line all the way to the beach.”